'Black students are more likely to be suspended from school'

A NEW study has found that ethnic minority students are more likely to recieve harsher punishments in schools for misbehaving than white children.

According to a new report by the National Education Policy Center [NEPC], which analyses 2006 data collected by the U.S. Department of Education, the overall suspension rate was higher amongst black students.

It was found that 28 percent of black male middle school students, aged 10-13, had been suspended, compared with a much lower 10 percent for white males. It also found that 18 percent of black female middle school students had been suspended, compared with just four percent of white female students.

Daniel Losen, a senior education law and policy associate for the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, who issued the report, suggested that the rates can be reasoned to black students being "disproportionately called out" by teachers.

"I think there is a growing movement to say, 'Wait a minute, we can do better,'" Losen told USA Today.

"Suspending kids right and left for minor offenses is not a sound educational policy."

The NEPC Director Kevin Welner told the Huffington Post: “Although our society is more diverse than ever before, schools today are more segregated than they were 30 years ago."

"It’s important to understand the link between diversity, discipline and academic achievement…. being kicked-out leads to becoming a dropout,” he added.